Please stop informing me about every little thing

17 Mar Please stop informing me about every little thing

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The sneakers were cool, and after what seemed like the thousandth shout out in newsletters and on Instagram I gave in and bought a pair. That moment of weakness would haunt me over the following days as they bombarded me with their excitement about my purchase and breathless updates on the progress of my sneakers to my door.

Thanks for your order, you rock, and you’ll love your sneakers.
They’re on their way, winging to you. Aren’t you excited?
Tomorrow. They will be there tomorrow.
They’ve arrived, you got them. Get ready to impress with your stylish new feet.
And finally and unsurprisingly the final missive. Do you like them …

In total, between both the sneaker company and the shipper I got five emails and three text messages about a pair of sneakers. Which would be funny except they are far from alone and so the friendly alerts instead serve to make me grumpy.

It seems everyone wants to ‘keep me informed’. Except it feels less about informing me and more about a self-serving funnel of engagement for themselves.

Because sitting underneath, I get a whiff of desperation, like it’s another way to try and get me to love you. To feed the need for “engagement”. And as anyone who’s ever suffered through unrequited love can tell you, it’s not a great place to be for either side.

A turbo-charged industry has grown around deliberately designing an experience for the customer, rather than it being a random collection of actions. And there are plenty of those actions that could benefit from a makeover. However, along with it is no shortage of assumptions about what customers need and just as importantly, want.

There are few places where this runs further amok than around engagement. Finding ways to “build engagement” is a bread and butter discussion in nearly every customer experience process I’ve been part of.

The result plays out as a constant one-way barrage of emails, texts, surveys, calls and programs that continue unabated until the customer leaves for less annoying pastures.

It’s a delicate dance because while customers do want information about things that are relevant to them, they will run away if that starts to seem like it’s more about you.

What other ways can you find out if things are working out?

An excellent place to start is what you promise. For example, did you say you would deliver something by a specific date? Did it get there by that date? Then it’s a good chance I’m happy. And you already have that information, so why are you asking me?

Excitedly telling me over and over how you’re keeping that promise isn’t endearing, it’s annoying.

Here are some other places information exists to help you cut down on the meaningless, bothersome asks and save talking to customers for stuff that matters. 

Track your deliveries for on-time and late. I have only ever had a jet stream of notifications that my shipment is going as planned. I’ve never had a company send me the more useful proactive note about a delay to my delivery.

Instead of asking me what I think about your website and how you can improve it, look at your web analytics for more than abandonment rates. 

Rather than relentlessly bombard me with NPS style surveys about my satisfaction, listen to customer calls for more than the script the call centre person uses. 

Train your staff to notice, not interrupt and give them a way to capture what they observe then act on that.

There are many places and ways customers tell you what they love or don’t love about you. So before you take the easy (for you) way out, take a bit of time to think about and process what the customer really wants to know and when.

So, while yes, I do like my sneakers, I don’t love them as much as I might have.

Thanks for reading